We have Lost It ...

A wikipedia entry, a couple of soundtracks running once in a while, crores of business and the dust has settled down. Not a movie buff and and so i watched Rang De Basanti (RDB) at least 3 years later than most people. Either my senses have decided not to react or I have got too practical, either way the emotions do not carry themselves for more than a few seconds. The euphoria that the film created was huge but I wonder what the end results have been if any. Its been natural to say the least, everything looks good in the beginning only to realize that what sounds great on a piece of paper is hard to materialize.
We all have grown up hearing, reading pieces of text relating to freedom struggle and how people showered their lives for the country, the passion is hardly reproduceable, leave alone the actual act. Inqalab Jindabad, Vande Matram, and the more theatrical "Kar chale hum fida ..." have always succeeded in enraging everyone to the very core. But that was the childhood, the world of fantasies and stories. We are grown up now, we are supposed to be practical and if we are not, we are forced to be practical. To trade a couple of hours wait in some queue for a 100 rs note is a good one by any standards. To get a file ranked up for a loan paying 500 rs is sensible, to term politics as dirty is fashionable and the list goes on. I do not blame the people and I am not trying to save myself from the embarrassment as well. We are constrained, we are busy, we are not allowed any luxuries. We have to study hard to place a foot somewhere in this cut throat competition world, we have to be doctors and engineers and at least an MBA in the plan B of things. The more stress you take better are the chances of a recognition in the society as hardworking individuals. The show goes on after you start to earn money, please your boss, talk a lot and think less, do the routines instead of new and creative things you have in yourself and everything that will make you successful (ahh! Forgot to mention for successful The "society"). That's the ideal path of life and no wonder most if not all are following it with dedication.
Choked is the word that I think I could use to describe us in the context, choked in the mind, choked in the heart, choked in the thoughts and choked in life. At times I feel we are in a big prison and the ultimate goal of life is to get out of it. In the beginning as little folks we have our fantasies of superheroes and getting through the prison in a flash, in a stroke. As time goes by and the fantasies go down, we take a workman like approach to get through it by trying to accumulate more resources always thinking of the threshold that we need to have to start. And the more we accumulate, the more we look around the prison, the threshold just keeps getting higher and higher to reach a point where hopes turns into pessimism. We start accepting things and term them as facts, the facts were always there, just that the realization came late, the later it comes the better it is!
I just hope (yes, i still have some) that the air remains fresh enough to breathe till I live, I already have lost hope on other things.

A Confused Mathematician at 25.

Let me first start with wishing myself a "Happy birthday". Happy Birthday Anil. :-)

I do not know why but 25 sounds a bit old to me. Not long ago I was working hard in college for grades and I was 20-ish only. Time has flown in last few years and probably at a pace which I could not get a hold of ( of course all in hindsight , all this while I was also illusioned of being comfortable about the pace :-)). There has been a transformation of sorts from a Anil of 20 to what I am today.
Amidst all this my theories have stayed and have been verified big time but the not so great thing is that they were never "optimistic" to start with. Law of averages has stood the test of time ( at least of the last few years) graciously. Moments of exuberance , extreme satisfaction and happiness have followed the Newton's third law of opposite reaction at other times. From a very chirpy and dynamic internal self of me I have turned into a inner self which has lost most of its momentum and also may be "hope". Exactly opposite has transpired into the exterior of me. From a quiet , shy self of me I now find myself speaking a lot ( personally , professionally , socially etc) and probably more so for the sake of it or may be to move away from the quietness that is gripping me! Perhaps I am scared.

So much so for the law of averages , let us explore some other things. Something that has remained with me and is one of my prized possession is the "dohavali" of Kabir (a famous sage and philosopher). So what did I establish out of this?
Well , there are some who might tend to categorise me as a "pessimistic self" but then I have every right to stand for what I believe , do not I ?
" Chale gaye so na mile , kisko poochun baat
Maat pita suta baandhwa , jhootha sab sanghaat "
This one does stands tall among the many that I find as intriguing. It might only be time before everyone recongnises it , later the better! Yes , I did not write that wrong , because the later you tend to recognise this fact , the more "fake happiness" you will have for life.
I know that I did a blunder by recognising ( and not only did I recognised , but I also internalised the same :-)) it so early, but then I am happy to categorise myself as intelligent than being happy elsewise!

Another thing that I will touch upon is the "Elasticity of Emotions"! So any one who believes that emotions are perfectly elastic , you can extend them to any degree you want?
I might want to have an argument becasue I disagree with that. Emotions and feelings are stretchable and within a range (range might be person specific) they are perfectly elastic , but if you stretch them beyond a point , there ain't any more pain/fun. Also established is the loss in charm of emotions/feelings when you repeatedly go over them time and again.

What is life ? Umm... tricky enough. I frankly do not know , seems like it is a degree in the "Philosophy of End". The good things is that everyone passes the course irrespective , ofcourse the smarter guys do it faster than others ;). Well , I am not being pessimistic but then the inevitable end cannot be denied.
I am not proposing the inaction but I am only being a proponent of "understanding". One must appreciate that there is probably no way one can breach the all mighty "law of averages" and no matter how smart you can be in formulating your objective function of life , you will be shot with a surprise! Imagine yourself being in a happy state when you have figured a "method" of living and then the surprise of some of the variables of your function leaving you and some yearning to come in! ;) You cannot counter that because you never live alone and you do not live for yourself only ( Ohh yeah , some of you are still illusioned , I leave it to time to teach you!).
I am very confident that I would have had exactly same passion in my thoughts if I this was a post of few years back and also in the opposite direction as this one, but then that is life for me.
There are illusions , then there is life and then there are jolts and then there is reality staring at your face. And for those who still think they can arbitrage happiness , well there was also once said that "house prices can never come down"! ;)
It ain't any stupidity to pay for your hedges , I agree that illusion of the wall street whiz kids is shattered but then people are also not grossly wrong! Nothing comes for free and protection of your so called "happiness" is no exception. Is not it funny that you must hedge even your happiness? I can imagine some of you going for a toss on what on earth I am talking!

As always , coming this far I lost it (this case i mean the thoughts), that probably sums up my life!
Trust me it does! :-)

Identifying Love ?

It's the month of February , Valentine's around , it's the month of Love!

I am not going into the debate of whether we must celebrate Valentine or not ; I fund it stupid (to me at least ! ) enough when people argue that we Indians blindly copying Western culture! Ohh come on , we should blindly copy any X , Y , Z if it is for good! Ok , i agree something as divine and great as Love cannot be constrained in a day or two and neither it "should" be tried to. But why do we have established habits of seeing the negative side of things only?
I got this from my manager (and he from a 16th century quote) that there is nothing to prove for sure that God exists and so we can do with not assuming his existence but then why take the risk of if actually he does?
Got my point ? All I am trying is that what wrong it can do if we allocate a day for Love , let's do it and do it with grace and enthuthiasm.
Now many a times all those of you who have been in love , half-love , attraction or got chance to be in vicinity of this divine feeling must have asked yourself if you really are in love? To me it is a sacred feeling and so are all the words that try and describe the plethora of colors and the myriads of human feelings and emotions. The faculty to actually feel them might be one for common distribution but the faculty to appreciate them and/or respect them is very limited in my opinion. I for one is very circumspect and conscious (and will always be! ) of these words like love , feelings , respect , care , affection ; I do not use them at my will and always feel a bit scared to actually use them! My philosophy for all these is pretty simple , I understand that yes you really feel them at some point of time but being a believer in the continuity of things , I guess the feelings are gradual and do not trigger a digital phenomenon ever( At least they should not!).
So one can never actually have that level where you suddenly can say that yes I am "now" in love , because may be you left that point of entrance a long time back. So it is very essential that you respect the continuity and to be very sure of things and also to avoid any issues , you relax and "tell yourself" that yes you are and it is for "real"!
When should one do that ? Umm... that's a question of sorts. Common symptoms are for sure attraction , desire to be together , close to the person you are falling for , day dreaming about him/her is one of them as well. Also one must try and find out things in their common habits, like if you are a music addict and when some romantic song is on , if you are constantly thinking of someone , that might be a good bet to believe that you have already fallen for the person!
Try this : listening to something like : "tujh mein rab dikhta hai ..." (ofcourse don't be conscious about things) and you are smiling within and on the exterior with some images of someone , then you bet you are in love! ;)
Also remember that elation reminds you of your beloved , excitement points to her , the person with whom you are confused about to share your grief with is your beloved as well(Because you want to vent everything in your heart to him/her but also do not wish to put grimness on his/her face!). The person you are perhaps most scared of from an emotional point of view , the person you are least scared of from a physical point of view, the person who does not make you laugh out loud that much ,but you always makes you wear a sweet little smile on your face because the satisfaction is on a higher level of human existence!

Happy to hear if you guys have some nice ways to recognise;)

A very happy Valentine to all!

God Bless,
Anil

Influence or Choice

Many a times I have heard this statement : " The influence of the Western Culture has ruined our ..... " or something similar. And the context ofcourse is Indian culture , values and traditions.
I thought about it and my Axiom of Choice philosophy tells me that it is immature and a bit harsh on the West to categosie everything we do blindly as an influence.
Humans are superior animals because of their ability to rationally and logically think on things that come their way and it is nothing more than being stupid to categorise a rational and logical choice as an undue or unwanted influence.

Their are plethora of ills and illogical acts imbibed in Indian tradition and if the West can be smart enough to pick up the good ones for themselves like Yoga , Meditation , Faith & Belief , why cant we be wise enough to do the same when it comes to picking up things from Western culture. In any case I have not seen any European complain about bad influences of the Indian culture.
A concrete example was when I told one of my German colleague that my family denied the proposal of a nice , decent girl because our horoscopes did not match. Now that is something common in Indian society and I am no exception to be forced into believing that. But my colleague's 2 line explanation of that was : Future life is based on how we perform and not on position of stars and to him it was a ridicule and illogical. Well a die hard astrologer can argue with him but the bottom line is he agrees to be driven in life by logic and reason and he has no complaints. He is being uniform in his actions and thoughts.

On one hand we boast of the scientific though process we posess and on other we leverage in an negative sense to get rid of our wrong doings by imposing it on some one else.

We all must try and bring uniformity is what we think , say and do. To end , let me quote Kabir:
"Mansa , Vaacha , Karmna , Kabir Sumiran Saar ".
Meaning : What we think should be what we say and what we say should be what we should do.

The Reservation Debacle

And it has struck back with even more disastrous proportions, yes; it's the same devil which people call reservation. One does not have to go down long in the memory lane to recollect the pictures of young students (budding Engineers & Doctors) and intellectuals like Shiv Khera and the alumni of some of the best institutions of education in India. The uproar of Youth for Equality is still fresh at least in the hearts of those who would ultimately be affected. As they say , we all must invest in future , but here we find a perfect example of how to destroy the future , and yes it is the same old formula of slow and steady wins the race , but sadly here the win will be a national disaster( no less).
I assume that the petty politics of implementing reservations in elite institutions of India did not fetch enough votes to the so called law-makers of our country and hence they have started yet another round to completely eradicate "Quality" from the institutions that are not only the best in India but those who compete with the best in the world. And what more comical than to hear from our dear policy makers that: "Institutions like IITs, IIMs and AIIMS are no-where among the best in the world". I can't help but laugh at the above quote.
I remember sometime back a chain of e-mails which presented certain facts and the conclusion was that if all Indians come back to India, US would be in big trouble with some of its premier institutions like NASA being forced to shut down because of shortage of people. And the govt. says that IITs and IIMs are not the best? Are we to deny the long list of entrepreneurs ( including N.R. Narayana Murthy (co-founder and chairman of Infosys), Vinod Khosla (co-founder, Sun Microsystems), Anurag Dikshit (co-founder of PartyGaming) and Suhas S. Patil (founder and Chairman Emeritus Cirrus Logic Inc.) )that these institutions have produced? Are we saying that the companies having IITians and IIM graduates in their top-management (Rajat Gupta (former Managing Director, McKinsey), Arun Sarin (CEO, Vodafone), Victor Menezes (Senior Vice Chairman, Citigroup), and Kanwal Rekhi (CTO, Novell)) are fools? Are we saying that the Wall Street firms paying them comparable or more salaries than any Harward, Princeton, Caltech graduate or post graduate are wasting their money? Are we saying that Professors from the "top-rated" world universities prefer Indian students as their co-researchers because they have a certain Indian quota to fill? Are we denying the IIT, IIM brand? One can only laugh at the wisdom of someone denying the famous brand name that these institutions have set.
Myself being a part of one of the best Wall Street firms in business and seen people from all "top-rated" universities, I can definitely say that our Indian elite institutions like IITs, IIMs definitely draw respect and lots of it from everyone. What is even more distressing is that this time the politicians have decided not to dilute the quality of these institutions but to strike at the very base of the entire structure. Rather than looking towards constructive solutions to fill the already shortage of quality professors in IITs and IIMs, they are proposing reservation for the teachers as well.
If we look back at the start of IIT and realize that a young nation was willing to poured very precious resources into creating this institution. Most people back then didn't understand how important science and engineering would be and yet the early leaders who got behind IIT obviously saw through and knew that the long-term investment would have a huge payout. Prime Minister Nehru described IIT as representing India's urges, India's future in the making and the people here and the other graduates of IIT have made that come true. Can any of these modern day fanatic politicians answer for me why Nehru did not introduce reservation in IITs at that time if this was the destination? Why IITs were given autonomy from the bureaucracy of govt. while it continued in every other sector. Of course there are special reasons behind that and the present day law-makers cannot destroy what has been achieved in the last 40 years.
What a pity? The very idea makes me shiver with fear. I am sorry to say that the prudent govt. has just lost the plot completely. The very idea of introducing reservation was to help the underprivileged to move up in ladder in society but that did not include breaking the upper stairs in the ladder and boasting that now everyone is equal. This policy is nothing but an attempt to degrade whatever progress India as a nation has made and them project that all are at equal now.
Is it not discrimination towards those who are meritorious? What mindset they will have while entering a classroom? Someone is teaching them not because he has the desired skills but because he is from a particular cast. No one can deny the fact that teaching is all about inculcating interest for the subject in the students and I fear that all the students would be discouraged from the start and that leads us nowhere.

I have a few requests to make, and I direct them to different groups of people.
First , let me request our dear policy makers to not being short sighted in their vision, not being bull headed while taking decisions that affect the nation, and understand the intricacies of matter before generalizing. Reservations are not going to take the country forward, it is the sacrifice that each individual has to make to steer the country in the right direction. We are witnessing a reverse brain drain in Indian context and let it continue, don't mar it. Please stop using the magic of reservation for your few votes.
I would also like to request all those Indians who have self-respect, who have faith in their abilities. Come on, till when we will be idle, till when we will see our country driven by vote bank politics than logic and common sense. By introducing this reservation for the teachers in premier institutions, the politicians are not only gathering some votes but it's a slap on our face saying we don't have enough zeal to get things done our way. Its discrimination to all who have hopes of doing something good in future. It's denting our ambitions, our plans, our future.
Please stand up against it and be counted, it's high time we do so!

The concentration of Life.

I still remember the titrations I did in my Chemistry Lab in class 11th and 12th and the importance of having exactly the same concentrations in order to have the color formation. On my favorite habit of relating academic things to life, I will try to interpret the "molarity"or normality or in non-technical terms the right concentration of life. How should we live our lives, how should we have the right mix of emotions? Where do we stand as of today and where actually should we?
Let us look at where we are today! The "should be" life as we all define is one which is full of joy, happiness, love, care, affection. Childhood dreams of a romantic date, a warm hug, a passionate kiss, a heavenly feeling on special occasions are what we put in our "should" be life. But cometh the mid of the 20s and we are disillusioned. We interpret life as something very harsh, practical, and rude and attach all sorts of adjective which make us realize that it is not a fairy tale as assumed. Many just take things as they come and call themselves the realists and few think about it and get confused.
I don’t know how many appreciate the fact that we ourselves have to take the blame for facing this jolt of the so called "reality". Crushes, affairs, relationships are the norm of the day. We all have them at some point of time and that "point" is surely before the disillusionment point. Have not we felt the emotions sometime? How many times can you use your emotions? Or better put how many times can you feel the same intensity of the same emotion. Using the titration analogy, I remember I used to run my base too fast and go a lil beyond the titre point and then almost always faked by putting a few more drops of acid ;). Are we ready to put that extra bit of zest in the second or possible third or more relationship of ours? Think over it, for feeling the same heavenly feelings again and making the relationship work exactly the way we want, we need that creativity, we need that fire within ourselves first. We have had felt those divinely emotions at some point of time and to appreciate them again or to derive the same pleasure out of them, we must consciously make efforts to enjoy them.
The Age of Seducers: I would not categorize myself as being audacious by declaring the present times to be the age of seducers. After having heart burn so many times (ironically, people still go for it, even after failing once, twice, thrice! I guess the search for happiness is ever continuingJ), people have categorized themselves as realists and anti-social. They have the repressed emotions. Repression from society, repression from themselves sometimes, they just want to break free. Any person giving them a sense of feeling of freedom would be so easily received that you need nothing more than a gentle push to start moving. In fact it would be a free flow without any natural resistance.
I would conclude by saying that it is not a bad thing to live your life as this but be brave to appreciate that you have had your share of feelings and next be generous to give the people their share of feelings. J There is nothing bad in taking the maximum out of life and breaking out of the norms but surely repenting should not be the culmination. :)

The Toughest Situations When It Comes To Decision Making.

Talking in the language of electrical engineers , its important to grasp where the signal changes by a lot. In mathematics similar phenomenon is captured by the first derivative , that is , slope. The similar situation in life is when you have to take decisions. Ofcourse what counts is that how many you took right considering that its important to get the important one's right as well.
We often find ourselves in a tussle when we have to decide in life based on an scenario. Its easy if there is only one or few options and one stands out in comparision of all the others.
Its difficult when we have two competing alternatives. In this category , I find the situation described below as the worst possible base case scenario.

Consider a decision in which you have the two option ( obviously competing ) as follows: 1. It is in accordance with what you have believed in or something you are totally passioante about. 2. The intellect compels you to have this option which goes totally against your conviction so far. You are lost completely between yourself and the self which is doubting your own self.
Imagine having an passion you are really obsessed with which you have carried with great vigour and tenacity thus far in life and you dearly wish to hold on but the intellect argues against the eventuality in which you will be deprived off that passion of yours. Where do you go ? What do you do ?
The pessimists would give in and accept the defeat but what about an enthuthiast or a positivist? Is not it fighting an eventually lost battle and you dont loose physically but mentally and spiritually as well? You start doubting your own decisions where you actually started such an passion and aplied so much of resporces to it? Was it an intellectually correct decision ( is acutally you ever made it ? ).
Can you increase your efforts in the hope that things would be better for you? I would do that but to be true I really dont judge this decision of mine. But i have to do it because i took the decision at some point of time and i should not let myself down at this moment.
I guess it is the most distressing thing in life , When you start doubting your own convictions. :-)